


Of Gods and Men

by theroyalsavage



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, M/M, also childhood friends??, idk what to call this actually, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 05:01:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4291671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theroyalsavage/pseuds/theroyalsavage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is something profoundly strange about the forest behind Will Solace’s new house. The trees, it seems, breathe magic. The truth is this: there are things that the forest hides that humans cannot understand.</p><p>Nico di Angelo is one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Gods and Men

The first time they meet, Will is seven.

His new house is big and foreign, way too large for a family of once-four-now-three. The halls reverberate, _bleed_ silence; when Will walks through the empty corridors, his footsteps are spat back out at him. They sound like gunshots in the quiet, rounds of bullets emptied into him, and he hates it.

Will hates lots of things, which is a little funny, because he’s a pretty small kid, all things considered, and small kids shouldn’t contain that much hate. He hates it when his juice boxes don’t have a hole where the hole should be. He hates when his socks have tears in the toes. He hates it when his mom and big sister, Kayla, talk in whispers about his dad and money, using big words and small voices, so Will can’t understand.

He hates the house most of all.

It’s in the middle of nowhere, tucked into the words like an afterthought, something half-forgotten and almost lost. The stairs creak, the windows screech when they open, and Will’s bedroom smells musty, damp. The outside is painted a pale green, and knobby, twisting trees are encroaching on the yard, stretching greedy fingers towards the elderly building like they want to claim it, take it as their own.

Will hates the house, but he _does_ like the woods. He likes the gnarled, grandfatherly appearance of the underbrush. He likes the way the sunlight filters through the branches and turns the whole world yellow. And he likes the way the air smells like magic.

He’s not the boldest kid, so it takes some time for him to pluck up the courage to ask his mom if it’s okay if he goes exploring. She’s making dinner when he asks - her eyes look tired, today, like she didn’t get any sleep again last night - and her response is to nod distractedly, give a harassed, careworn smile.

“Of course. What are the rules?”

“Be careful,” Will recites dutifully. “Stay on the path. Be home before dark.”

His mother gives a careworn, gentle smile and taps a finger on Will’s nose. “Wear your old sneakers, okay? In case you step in any mud.”

Will beams at her and gives her a sloppy kiss on the cheek in gratitude. He half runs, half skips into the forest, plunges in like he’s diving into water, marveling in the way the shadows of the leaves above him dapple his freckled arms, form patterns and pictures and constellations on his skin.

The path is winding and narrow, but well-cleared. As Will walks, he starts to notice things - a pile of rocks in a strange formation here, what looks like a thunderbolt carved into a tree there. Once, there’s a burst of barking in the distance, what sounds like two different dogs.

The trees seem to whisper, susurrations that sound partially like incantations in another language and partially like Will’s name. A shadow on the ground on front of him ripples, like water in a puddle. Too substantial. Too liquid. That is not what shadow should look like.

Abruptly, Will is struck by a prickling sort of itch on the back of his neck that can only come from being watched, and he thinks about turning around, going home. But that’s stupid, and Will’s no pansy (he’d never be able to look at himself in the mirror if he turned back now!), and so he plunges deeper.

The path drops off very suddenly, ends at a river with bubbling water, shockingly, _impossibly_ blue. Real water doesn’t look like that, Will is positive. He creeps closer, gets down on his hands and knees. The bottom is clearly visible through the hiccuping, leaping waves.

Every time Will thinks he has a word to describe the color of the water, it changes. One moment, robin’s egg, the next aquamarine, then royal, then cerulean.

For a second, it looks like there are _eyes_ looking up at him from the water, eyes the color of the ocean, made from the waves themselves.

Will gasps and reaches forward, sticks his fingers into the cool, lapping stream.

Then he is tilting forward, and tumbling, and falling, and then he is underwater.

Drowning is surprisingly violent. His vision is bathed in crimson terror and his throat convulses and he digs at the water like he’s trying to claw his way through earth and soil. But the surface stays stubbornly far - there’s no way the water was _this_ deep - and Will’s lungs are screaming, and it is beginning to dawn on him that he is going to die.

(He supposes he never considered whether or not the magic that inhabited this forest was _good_.)

And then a hand is closing around his own, and he is being dragged upwards, towards the light, towards the air. He breaks the surface and draws a breath that is closer to a scream, allows his savior to tug him towards the bank, back onto the path.

He flops onto the hard-packed dirt face-first, wheezing, still spitting water out of his mouth. It is a long time before he has collected himself enough to turn to the person who saved him.

It’s a boy about his age, probably a little taller, a little skinner, and he is like nothing Will has ever seen before. If you asked Will to describe him, he probably wouldn’t know how to.

There’re the eyes, Will supposes. Pitch black, midnight black, the kind of black that pins you in place and reads you, makes you feel like you’re transparent. And there’s the way he’s standing, stiff, uncomfortable, his eyebrows furrowed and his legs slightly bent, like he’s preparing himself to run if Will attacks. His hair is dark and messy, a little too long, his skin a deep olive. His clothes are weird, too: a black kimono-like robe emblazoned with gray whorls, and bare feet.

There’s a tattoo on his collarbone, a black smudge that looks a lot like the swirls scattered across his kimono.

“You saved me,” Will says. He holds his hand out, carefully, like he’s trying to approach a stray cat that might bolt at any second. “Thank you.”

“You should stay out of this forest,” the boy says. He has a funny sort of accent. Will doesn’t think he’s ever heard anything like it. “It’s not safe.”

“I just slipped.” Will shrugs. “You sound like my mom.”

“I’m not your mom.”

Will snorts. “It’s a… a saying. I _know_ you’re not my mom”

The boy blinks. “Oh.” Then his eyebrows furrow, and he casts a dark glance at the river. “I’m not kidding, though. There are bad things, here. It’s not good, for people.”

Will points at him. “ _You’re_ here.”

His expression doesn’t change, and Will suddenly understands that there might be something very, very important that he’s missing.

“You need to leave.” The boy gestures to the path behind them. “Stay on the path, and don’t look at anything in the woods. If you get lost, follow the shadows.”

“Follow the shadows? What does that mean?” Will demands. He turns to look at the river, then back to the look at the boy, but the boy is gone, and Will is alone.

He touches his wrist where the boy held him and begins to trudge back to his house, soaking wet and shivering.

* * *

 

After that, Will looks at the woods a lot differently.

He goes back in countless times, looking for the dark-haired boy and once, for the river that he fell into. But the path never seems to say the same, and, although he always feels like he’s being followed, when he turns around, he only ever sees the shadows.

The incident begins to fade. Will loses the sound of the boy’s voice first, that weird, lilting, musical accent he couldn’t place. And then the color of his eyes, and the appearance of the water, and finally he can’t remember whether it even happened at all.

He is nine when his sister snaps.

“We have enough problems,” she seethes, “without you sneaking off into the damn forest every time somebody takes their eyes off you!”

“Kayla,” their mom reproaches, but the damage is done.

Will sprints out of the house, down the lawn, into the tree line. He lets his feet take the lead, stops paying attention to where he steps. His vision is blurred with hot, itchy tears.

His foot snags on a root and he falls, skinning his knee and landing face-first in fresh soil. Dirt is smudged on his hands and chest, and he can’t stop crying, and he wants to go _home_ , back to when he wasn’t the weird kid without a dad, who sees ghosts nobody else believes is there.

“Are you okay?” a voice says behind him, and Will sucks in air sharply and spins around. The boy who pulled him out of the river stares at him, his head tilted a little and his eyes wide. He is taller now, like Will, his hair pulled into a stubby ponytail at the base of his neck, the lines of his face a little sharper and less rounded. His clothes look precisely, exactly the same.

Will angrily rubs at his face, tries to press the tears back into his eyes, but he’s embarrassed and furious and it doesn’t work.

The dark-haired boy kneels next to him, reaches out tentatively to wipe at Will’s tears. He is prettier than Will remembers, his eyelashes long and dark and graceful against the warm skin of his cheeks. His hands are pretty, too, his fingers careful against Will’s face.

He smells like the forest, like fresh air and birdsong and quiet.

Will blinks at him.

“What happened?” he asks Will quietly, pulling his hands away from Will’s face.

“My sister yelled at me,” Will sniffs.

The boy nods. “My sister yells at me all the time. Sisters are dumb.”

Will’s face splits into a watery smile, despite himself. For a second, the boy’s lips twitch upwards, though his carefully neutral expression is back in place almost immediately.

“Are you real?” Will asks him.

The boy scowls. “Duh. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Well, yeah, but… I mean, are you just inside my mind?”

He hesitates, then shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” Will says. “Good.”

“You keep coming back,” the boy says, his eyes stormy, his expression severe. “Even though I told you to stay away.”

“I like it better here,” Will answers, stubbornly crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s nice.”

“It’s _dangerous_. And my dad told me I’m not allowed to help you anymore.”

“You helped me today.”

His skin is dark and the light’s not good, but Will could swear the boy’s cheeks flush a little pink. “Yeah, well. After this, I’m not allowed to help you anymore. Just… be safe.”

“Last time, you said it’s not good for humans here,” Will accuses. “If you’re not a human, than what are you?”

“Something else,” the boy says.

This time, Will is watching as the shadows collect around him like fog, and he disappears.

* * *

 

Time passes. Will outgrows his old clothes. His voice starts cracking, and he starts finding hair in places he never had hair before. School gets more hectic. He takes guitar lessons, plays on soccer teams, runs track. By the time he gets home, night is falling; he can’t remember the last time he went into the forest to explore.

Other things change, too. His friends start to talk about girls, about first kisses and holding hands and other stuff Will’s never thought about before.

He pictures himself kissing, sometimes, but the other person is always blurry, undefined, more an idea than a human. He doesn’t think he _wants_ to kiss girls. He doesn’t really know what he wants.

Will is twelve, playing baseball in his backyard with a couple friends, when Lou Ellen hits the ball too hard and it disappears into the brush. Will sighs and volunteers to grab it, whacking his way through trees and bushes, going deeper and deeper until suddenly he can’t see the exit anymore, and there’s no path in sight.

“Fuck,” Will says, which is a new word Austin taught him. It sounds indelicate on his tongue, clunky and ugly. Perfect for the situation. He says it again.

On the ground, a shadow roughly the size of a person stretches in front of him. It’s one of those weird, ripply ones he remembers from his childhood, the ones that look more like puddles than shadows. He looks at it, and then it twitches, undulates, begins to move languidly forwards.

Will hesitates, then follows it.

It leads him through underbrush for what must be five minutes, and he’s beginning to feel a little stupid and a lot panicked when suddenly, the trees open up, and here’s the path, and there’s the baseball, lying a couple yards away.

There are eyes on him again, he can feel it. He doesn’t turn around when he says, “Thank you,” and then adds, as he leaves, “My name is Will Solace. Maybe next time, you’ll tell me yours.”

He doesn’t stay long enough to hear the word _Nico_ , lifted by the breeze to the sky.

* * *

 

When Will is fourteen and a half, his father turns up on their doorstep. He’s just the same as the photographs in Will’s mother’s wallet, hasn’t aged a day, all easy smiles and puppy-dog eyes and mournful slope to his shoulders.

He shares Will’s messy curls, Will’s newfound, lanky height, Will’s dusting of freckles across his face and chest and arms.

Will hears his father’s whispers, hears his pretty promises, pretty apologies, pretty lies. His mom cries, and Will pictures Kayla’s expression, if she wasn’t a hundred miles away, at university.

Will is fourteen and a half, and he feels like he’s five again, waiting at the door for his dad to come home from work, even though he never will. And he is hit with questions he hasn’t asked himself in years, half-formed ideas that bang on his consciousness and itch at his mind, and make him want to physically peel his mind away from his body.

_“Did I make it that easy to walk in and out of my life?”_

He walks into the woods that night, fists stuffed in his pockets, keeping his mouth pressed tightly closed like that will keep his fears inside him. It isn’t that long a wait this time, he’s been walking for less than five minutes before he hears footsteps fall in beside him.

The boy takes awhile to materialize, feet first, then legs, then his torso, his neck, his face. He’s significantly shorter than Will now, almost delicate-looking, with defined cheekbones and sharp shoulders and lean muscles he didn’t have when they were little. He’s wearing the same clothes as always. Do those things grow with him? They don’t look even a little bit ragged or threadbare.

There is a burst of warmth in Will’s chest when their eyes lock, something unfamiliar and inexplicable. Will wants to feel it more. He wants to bury himself in it, set himself adrift and let the current drag him away.

“Are you ever going to listen to me,” the boy growls, “or should I just stop talking?”

“Hi,” Will says.

“This isn’t a joke, Solace.”

Will’s eyebrows shoot upwards. “You know my name?”

His mouth twitches, like he’s trying to force himself to maintain the angry scowl. “You told me last time. Remember?”

It takes a second, but then Will does. The ball and the path and the rippling, viscous shadow.

“So that _was_ you.”

It might be Will’s imagination, but the boy looks a little pleased as he nods.

“ _How_?” Will demands. “What _are_ you?”

The boy shrugs. “Nico di Angelo.”

 _Nico di Angelo_. It fits him, Will thinks.

“Is that your name?”

“You could call it that, yeah.”

Will’s eyebrows furrow. “What would _you_ call it?”

“My vessel.” When Will continues to look blank, he sighs and says, “I’m tied to your earth through old magic. Through a title. Like a name. Everyone in this forest is. The trees. The air. The river you fell into.”

“Wait, the river I fell into is a _person_?”

Nico winces. “Not a person. Not… exactly.” He holds out a hand, towards Will’s face, and Will gapes in stunned, silent awe as darkness billows out from his fingertips like dye spreading in water. The darkness spreads, and then Nico flicks his wrist, and the shadows solidify abruptly into a gleaming, metallic, pitch-black sword that looks like it was wrought from onyx.

He spins the sword in his hand and then, in a flash, it’s at Will’s neck, surprisingly real against the soft skin of his throat.

Nico says, “There is a shrine, a couple miles deeper into the forest. They pray to me for safety in the nighttime, for passage in the darkness, for protection after death.”

“You’re a god,” Will whispers.

Nico lowers his sword. “I’m something,” he affirms. “Everything in these woods is something.” His tone becomes pointy. “And not all of them take kindly to humans trampling on sacred lands.”

“I’m not going to stop coming back,” Will says, fiercely. “ _You’re_ here. I’m not staying away.”

For a moment, Nico just looks stunned. Then he turns away, stares moodily down at the ground, and says, “You’re an idiot.”

Will nods, offers the shorter boy a huge, lopsided grin. “I know.”

* * *

 

True to his word, Will keeps coming. At first, he is afraid that Nico will stay away, will watch him from behind like he used to, will yell at him for ignoring his instructions and then use that shiny shadow-sword on him. At first, Nico does grumble, but he relents surprisingly easily.

The woods always change, so they have no set meeting spot. Instead, Will wanders, and Nico finds him. Will tells Nico about his family, about his dad wanting joint custody, about his sister deciding to study abroad, about his own struggles with reading and attention span in school.

Nico doesn’t say much about himself. He mentions his father, sometimes. Never the sister he talked about once. Never a mother. Never friends.

Will sort of thinks he must be lonely.

He is fifteen when it falls apart. He is running through the forest, dodging trees and bushes, euphoric from being the only freshman at his high school to be selected for the varsity soccer team, his fingers itching to touch Nico’s hair. (Nico’s still skittish, his touches reluctant and rare, but Will has become an expert at coming up with excuse to brush thighs or bump shoulders or run a hand across his cheekbone. Even, sometimes, when Will’s feeling brave, trace a finger along the tattoo on Nico’s collar.)

And then.

“This is him, then? The human?”

Will freezes, stumbles, almost falls. He doesn’t recognize the voice, deep and masculine, but it has a similar accent to Nico’s, and there’s something about it that chills him to the bone.

“I recognize him,” another voice replies. “He’s grown a lot. Still shrimpy, though.”

“Boys. Enough.”

Will turns. There are three of them, two men and a woman. One of the men, immensely tall and blond, with a golden sword slung across his hip, drawls, “I sort of pictured him shorter.”

The other man, who has a shock of black hair and eyes the color of the ocean, leans against a tree, spinning a short knife between his fingers like a baton. “He used to be short. Short enough to drown in my damn river.”

“I said, _enough_ ,” the woman snaps. The two men look dangerous, but she is the one that scares Will. There’s something cold and commanding about her, in the set of her head, in the braid down her back, in the pair of dogs that look like they’re wrought from silver and gold, pacing around her feet.

There’s a golden circlet on her head that looks like a crown. She is, every inch of her, a queen.

“William Solace,” she booms, and Will stands up straight, trying to keep from sobbing. “You defy ancient laws. Tread ground sacred to the gods. You aim to defile one of our own. Do not deny it.”

“Defile!” Will squeaks, and then he slaps a hand over his mouth. The black-haired man snorts.

The woman’s gaze narrows. “You refuse to admit your crimes?”

“I’m not-” Will takes a deep breath, and then spits out, very quickly, “I’m not trying to disrespect you! And I’m not trying to - to defile anything. Nico’s my friend.”

The blond man’s gaze softens a little, though the woman’s does not.

“Be that as it may,” she snaps, “it is forbidden for our kind to form relationships with humans. Nico knows this-”

“Then punish _me_ , not him.”

Will whips around. Nico is approaching from behind him, his jaw set into a harsh line. Shadows swirl around him like an aura, leaping and jumping off his skin.

“I’m the one at fault,” Nico continues. “Not Solace. He doesn’t understand our laws, Reyna-”

“You tried to warn me, though,” Will interrupts. “I’m not innocent. If you’re going to be punished, then I should be punished, too.”

“That’s stupid-”

he woman watches them argue silently, a little bit of the severity draining from her expression. When she sighs, both Nico and Will shut up, Will’s hand seeking Nico’s automatically.

Their fingers thread together. The blond man stares.

“You cannot be in both worlds,” Reyna murmurs. “You can have Will Solace, or you can have your abilities.”

Nico’s eyes fly wide.

“I can make you mortal,” Reyna says. “You will lose your power, your agelessness, your strength. You will have to leave the forest, both of you. You will never be allowed to return.”

Will says, “You can’t.” Nico looks wounded, so Will plows on, “Not for me. I’m not _worth_ it, Nico-”

Nico shakes his head. “You are.”

The blond man claps a hand to his chest while the black-haired one makes a dramatic gagging motion. Nico snarls, “Shut up, Jackson.”

“You will not choose now,” Reyna booms. “My decree is this: William Solace leaves the forest for five years. If, at the end of that time, you still want to leave with him, you may. With my blessing.”

Will gapes. “Five - five years…? Wait, _no_ -”

“All right,” Nico says. He bows to Reyna, levels a glare at the two men behind her, and then turns to Will. “Come on.”

They walk in silence, Nico’s fingers tight around Will’s. When they reach the edge of the forest, Nico pauses, his eyes on the house, visible through the trees.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” he says. “You should live, Solace.”

Will scoffs. “Don’t be a moron.”

“Says the idiot.”

Will kisses him. He doesn’t know what makes him do it, only knows that their lips fit like puzzle pieces, Nico’s hands coming up to knot in his hair. The tang of salt is heavy on his tongue; he sucks on Nico’s lower lip, and realizes that the smaller boy is crying.

Will pulls away. “Five years,” he says, “is not that long.”

Nico lifts a hand to his mouth.

Will can feel his eyes on him, even as he walks up the stairs, onto the back porch, and into the house.

* * *

 

Memories change, fade, disappear with time. Will’s memories of Nico, though, never do.

He is twenty, back from university on spring break, when he goes into the forest for the last time. The trees are full in bloom, an array of pinks and greens and oranges splattered across the landscape like paint. Five years have changed a lot of things - he’s broader, his voice deeper, his clothing sense better, his scene phase over - but the forest speaks to him the same, even now.

He has never felt so alive as he does right now, as he steps through the underbrush, breathing in the scent of damp soil, the scent of change.

There is a quiet cough behind him, so he stops, spins on his heel. Nico stands in the center of the path behind him, dressed in black jeans and a gray sweater instead of his kimono. He’s more breathtaking than Will remembers, all delicate lines and warm skin and wide, expressive eyes.

And then his lips turn upwards, into a small, careful smile, and Will breaks.

He sprints forward, half-tackles Nico into a hug. He fits into Will’s arms perfectly, his head falling forward to rest in the crook of Will’s neck. It is only a second before Nico’s arms close around him, too, and they stand like that for what might be a second and might be a lifetime.

“I love you,” Will is chanting. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

When they break apart, Nico is still smiling. He punches Will in the shoulder, keeps his fist there, pressed against Will’s skin. “Still an idiot, I see.”

“Still a grumpy asshole, I see.”

Nico laughs. “Touche.”

They leave the woods together, for the last time, and as they walk, Will could swear he hears soft laughter, and a woman’s voice whispering, “Good luck.”

**Author's Note:**

> The formatting of this took me approximately a million years because when I copied and pasted the text from Tumblr all the paragraph breaks/italics went away, so if there are any kooky mistakes that you catch, please let me know.  
> Also, a thousand thanks for reading! (Assuming you didn't scroll to the end just to read the author's note. Because, you know. That would be a little weird.)


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